


Runner's High

by cockles_take_the_wheel



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Cockles, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:39:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockles_take_the_wheel/pseuds/cockles_take_the_wheel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does Misha think about when he runs?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runner's High

Running, in a lot of ways, is like meditating.

Misha has always loved to run. The rhythmic percussion of his feet against the pavement, his even, tempered breathing, the steady thud of his heart, they’re like an orchestra that fosters unity.

When he runs, there is just his body, acting as one contiguous muscle. It aches and stretches and peaks. And just when it feels like he can’t take another step, when it hurts to breath, when even his chest is sore, his legs are dead weights, his arms are limp and heavy, he can feel the wall crumble.

And it’s that, that pushing past what he didn’t think he could, breaking through everything else, through thoughts and worry and trouble and physical boundaries that free him.

Misha can feel his spirit rise, his body feels light, and at last, his thoughts are lucid. And it’s only then, after he’s broken through the wall of doubt and pain that he is ever truly in unison with his mind. It helps him to find that calm, steady center of himself, where he can branch out from. Where his thoughts settle, and quiet, where he can focus all his mental capacity in one direction.

That’s always where he’s found his center. The eye of his storm. Between pain and doubt, ache and fear, there is just a sliver of himself that exists in that narrow band of freedom. Where the storm clears, and he remembers what it means to be Misha.

This is where the archetypes of his psyche dwell. Where he is the epitome of himself. This is where he contemplates the divine, and injustice. Where he found his sons name, and resolved to become an actor. This is where he fell in love with Vicki, and Rachel, and Jensen.

In-between the beats of his heart, the intake of breath, the swoop of his legs. The negative space where the concept of ‘Misha’ is formed and reshaped and modeled, between when he can’t take another step and his second wind - it’s his golden moment. Not the hazy alcohol-induced ‘golden moment’ from books, his clarity comes from a place inside him, free of pain and judgement. It exists only in those fleeting moments while he runs, but the decisions he makes in this place, his ‘well of self’ shapes the rest of his life.

It’s this place, sheltered and private, that he takes the time to really look at Jensen. Recall the spring-green of his eyes, the star-bursts of yellow and orange at their centers, and the dark green-gray of the outermost ring of his pupils.

He splits open, down the center, a crack lined with images of Jensen’s hands (calloused and veined, tanned, bitten nails and neglected cuticles), his beard (strawberry-kissed in the sun, empty patches just on the outsides of his goatee), his lips (swollen pink and moist from where they’d kissed), his voice (deep and resonating as he whispers ‘yes’ into the heated space between them).

He never intended to love him, to want him, to crave him so completely. And if it weren’t for the cathartic, laser-focus that his runner’s high gives him, he might never have stumbled onto the conclusion.

But the instant he feels it, in his heart - like a constricting hand, icy fingers wrapped around his lungs, a twitter in his gut and an overwhelming urge to smile - he knows it to be true.

—

He doesn’t run  _so_  he can think, he runs because it’s a part of him, ingrained into the very reflection of him. But when he runs, finally, he  _can_  think.

He clears his mind and lets his feet carry him. But for those fifteen minutes after he breaks through the wall and just before exhaustion and fatigue catch him, he learns what it means to be Misha, in all his ever-changing forms and shapes and functions.

And one day, in the late spring of 2009, the new shape his heart adheres to is 6’1” and dangerously close to perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> gif credit: [[X](http://strangepicturesofmishacollins.tumblr.com/post/49690312939)]


End file.
